The future of Xbox will be revealed on February 15th
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/12/24070445/microsoft-xbox-business-update-event-future-february-15
Prediction: in the future it’ll be incapable of running games, will be a designated Twitter machine.
They’ll call it X Box
Given the comments last week assuring people that Xbox was still going to make consoles, my money is on a streaming only console with no local games.
Online access required 24x7
Ugh, I hate how extremely likely that is 😮💨
TwitterBox AKA Bird Cage.
Twitter is called “X” now, so xbox still works.
Yeah but there is only one person on the planet who wants to call it X.
Is it Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen? World renowned celloist Yo Yo Ma? Former Liverpool FC left back Steve Harkness?
I’m going to guess they’re just going to announce their first party games are coming to PlayStation and Switch 2
New indecipherable naming system.
The New Original Xbox X-S Console Series was just announced with two levels, the X-S Pro-X Phactor or cheaper ST-X Pro-BoxX 2.
The previous gen Xbox X/S will be re-released as a subscription legacy product called Xbox One 2.0.
Finally, it’ll be shaped like an X!
DirectX13 will be a wrapper windows only API for vulkan /s
The Xbox 12 will run on Windows 12 and is basically a locked down PC that runs another Xbox DRM layer on top of Windows 12 that makes it so you cant actually use it as a PC.
That’s basically what xboxes have been for the past two generations already, despite the snark that kind of makes them more open than other consoles just because the games are basically already PC games
Except that you cant actually use it as a computer without DRM without a ton of fucking work, nor as a gaming device without DRM without a ton of work.
MSFTs development notes and such for the Pluton CPU architecture heavily draws from wanting to be able to stop people hard-modding existing Xboxes.
A separate, physical security co processor doesnt work because people figure out how do basically flash an Xbox, or do some kind of software stun lock, then physically remove the anti piracy doohickey, then finish flashing the thing into a hackDbox.
Thankfully the linux community appears to have neutralized that threat for PCs running Linux, at least.
People spent lots of effort on Xbox 360 hacking just because microsoft spent so much effort making it as unhackable as possible. Fortunately, console gaming is so much less relevant today that it’s not even worth remembering what the latest consoles are. Sure, there are some shitty AAA titles that lock things down or are so demanding they need a $100k pc but between the few ethical worthwhile ones and the expansive library of actually good indie games on steam, consoles just aren’t worth fucking with anymore.
I know that from an actual standpoint of generally speaking most bang for your buck, pc’s have made more sense for over a decade.
But, console gaming is still a huge part of marketshare. Yes, it doesnt really make sense. But literally millions of people still haven’t got the memo.
Only people I know who still use consoles basically just have them for that /one/ exclusive they can’t wait to play.
The wider gaming landscape is not like us though.
Basically, there are still a ton of kids and/or casuals. We are likely inundated and affected by literally decades of following industry news and learning at least a decent amount of the technical hardware and software capabilities and principles… a huge amount of people still basically just view games with very little of that background knowledge.
Game Pass availability on all consoles. I’m calling it.
I’ve been saying this to my friends for a good while. I would take it even further than that too.
My prediction has long been that since they were thinking about getting rid of it anyway, and they are shifting focus, that what you predict will happen and that eventually either Xbox will not exist or the Xbox of the future will just be a streaming dongle like the firestick. Just a little app store with controller and you stream all of your games over wifi.
They sell it for dirt cheap and no legit console can compete for basic gaming. Sony will still have a hardcore market, especially with vr and their first party titles, but most of the casual crowd would buy a 50-100 dollar “Xbox” so fast and just pay for game pass. It is a no brainer for Xbox, consoles are always a major loss of money and they don’t want physical media anyway.
Edit: “We have a different vision for the future of gaming. A future where players have a unified experience across devices. A future where players can easily discover a vast array of games with a diverse spectrum of business models. A future where more creators are empowered to realize their creative vision, reach a global audience, unite their communities, and succeed commercially. A future where every screen is an Xbox.”
While they announced new hardware they were real hush on it, just that it would shake up the industry. While I’m sure they would say that regardless and a lot of people say a handheld, either way I don’t think it’s just a console. A handheld would allow exactly my prediction to be possible but it wouldn’t be as cheap.
That quote feels like it nails exactly what I expected though. It might be some time but I do think it will happen and their whole narrative seems to be moving away from Xbox being a console.
